Is There Anybody Out There?
Sorry for the sporadic blogging; I’ve been traveling a lot. I missed Sunday’s post, but this one–though related to current events science news–will have obvious religious overtones.
On Facebook Daniel Kuehn shared this HuffPo article about a recent NASA panel telling the general public about the search for extraterrestrial life. Here is the opening of the piece (but the actual hour-long presentation is at the link too):
NASA’s top scientist predicts that we’ll find signs of alien life by 2025, with even stronger evidence for extraterrestrials in the years that follow.
“I think we’re going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we’re going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years,” NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said Tuesday during a panel event on water in the universe.
“We know where to look. We know how to look,” Stofan added. “In most cases we have the technology, and we’re on a path to implementing it. And so I think we’re definitely on the road.”
Others at the panel agreed.
“It’s definitely not an if, it’s a when,” said Jeffery Newmark, NASA’s interim director of heliophysics.
When we do find evidence of life, however, it’s likely it won’t be signs of alien civilization but rather something much, much smaller.
“We are not talking about little green men,” Stofan said. “We are talking about little microbes.”
I only watched about half of the video, but here are my quick reactions:
==> They actually don’t have a shred of direct evidence of life outside of Earth, so it’s a bit odd that they think they’re creeping ever closer, and Newmark’s assertions is really odd.
==> What is happening is that these scientists are absolutely confident that life arose on Earth billions of years ago because the necessary ingredients were in place, and this somehow–in a process not nearly understood–yielded the first proto-cell capable of reproduction. That abiogenesis then set in motion standard Darwinian evolution.
==> Because the scientists are sure that that’s how life started on Earth, arising from purely natural causes, they think that when those initial conditions are also present on other planets in the universe, that surely life must arise on them too. So what they are discovering is not actual evidence of life, but evidence of water, numerous planets around distant stars, etc.
==> Obviously this is not my field, but my understanding is that biologists have a lot of evidence to support the claim that “all life on Earth today sure seems like they are descended from a common ancestor.” (Of course people who believe in Biblical creationism would reject even that–but I’m trying to just referee the dispute here.) However, I don’t think there is a good theory at all about abiogenesis–about how that first bona fide life form arose on Earth from the pre-biotic soup. I think most scientists are “sure” that it happened that way, because that’s really the only option they have. (Though some were intellectually honest enough to bite the bullet and posit that aliens seeded life on Earth.)
==> Don’t forget Fermi’s paradox: If the universe is actually teeming with life–as the standard models predict–then why aren’t we being bombarded with radio messages from advanced aliens? It’s weird that NASA scientists are confident they’ll discover the existence of microbes within 20 years, and yet the SETI programs continue to search the heavens for any hint of intelligence.
==> It is typical for atheists to mock Christians for having their self-esteem deflated in the wake of the heliocentric model of the solar system and of course Darwin. “Oh, boo hoo, you poor babies aren’t so special after all! You’re not the center of the universe and you’re no more significant than a slug. Deal with it, Bible thumper.” And yet, I have noticed that many atheists are also very concerned with programs to prolong the human lifespan and who would be devastated if it turns out that humans are really alone in the universe. I won’t bother explaining why this might be, since it’s so obvious.
==> Strictly speaking, even fundamentalist Christians who believe the Bible is the literal word of God do not have a uniform position on alien life. Some are agnostic (“Genesis doesn’t mention it, but it doesn’t explicitly rule it out either”) while others think certain odd passages in the Old Testament refer to aliens. So if the NASA scientists turn out to be correct, that actually wouldn’t matter for Bible believing Christians (despite the haughty comments at that HuffPo article). However, suppose 20 years roll by and there still is no evidence of ET life? Will more and more scientists around the world say, “Maybe our theory of terrestrial abiogenesis is wrong, since the predictions we confidently gleaned from it were falsified?” I doubt it.
So you accept some science but what about the science that says the Universe is billion of years ago and billion of years across? Why would the Biblical God go to all that bother to teach Humanity some sort of lesson? Why is He going to tear it all down and replace it all the New Heaven, New Earth and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone?
Gil wrote:
Why would the Biblical God go to all that bother to teach Humanity some sort of lesson?
Because He loves us? I bother making blog posts to give a lesson to a bunch of people who despise me. Why wouldn’t an omnipotent God create the universe to teach billions of humans something?
Bob, Gil’s question is why God would create a Universe filled with stars that humans will never visit or even discover, and having so many different events happening before humans even existed and which humans will never find out about. He’s not asking why God would expend effort to teach humanity a lesson, just why he would expend effort that was irrelevant to that goal.
I think your answer would simply be “Because all that stuff is necessary if God wants to create the Universe just from simple laws of physics.”
How can anyone know if the universe is full of stars humans will “never” discover? And as far as being constrained by the laws of physics, I don’t really understand what your point is here. If someone believes in God, then they obviously believe that these laws themselves were created by God.
“How can anyone know if the universe is full of stars humans will “never” discover?” Well, it’s not a guarantee, but the Universe is so big that even if we were to develop faster-than-light travel and devote our entire civilization to nothing but trying to catalogue every single star in the Universe, it’s massively unlikely that we would succeed in any conceivable length of time. And that assumes that there aren’t civilization-ending calamities and the like.
“And as far as being constrained by the laws of physics, I don’t really understand what your point is here. If someone believes in God, then they obviously believe that these laws themselves were created by God.” Yeah, I’m just saying that God could have either just set up some simple laws of physics and then let everything play out, or he could actively participate in creating the world, its features, and its events. So I was suggesting that the billions of stars and the like may be a necessary component of the Universe if God wanted to create the Universe out of simple laws of physics (whereas if he were doing things “freehand”, he could dispense with stars that he knows no one’s going to discover anyway). I’m not suggesting that he’s “forced” to act according to the laws of physics.
Ok that makes more sense. I guess my main point was that I have no idea what may happen or what capabilities people may have 100 years from now, let alone thousands. Perhaps there is a greater purpose for some of these things that we have no way of knowing right now.
Obviously, even believers of the most fundamental, earth-centric universe believe in the Star Wars movies: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” (even though, practically speaking, it could have been set, just as easily, in a neighboring galaxy cluster), thus necessitating a larger-than-one galaxy universe.
I think you are right here. We can only find life if it is there. When he he says “I think we will find life soon” he is really saying “soon we will have the ability to spot life if it is there, and I think it is there.”
Finding life is not relevant to Fermi’s paradox – only intelligent life capable of communicating. There has been life on Earth for about 3.5 billion years. It took 2 billion years to develop eukaryotes on Earth (with a nucleus – this allows much more complex life). That is a long time, so it could be quite rare. Lots of life may never get beyond a very simple form. Even with complex life, intelligence to construct technology took another 1.5 billion years. It seems quite likely that such a thing would not develop at all. The universe could be teeming with life, but have very little intelligent life. In the words of Eric Idle:
“And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth”
Recently covered by the inimitable Stephen Hawking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcC6FYyL4U
Two things to clarify:
1.) Radio waves diminish as they travel over space, so you need a better and better antennae to receive messages as you increase the distance. This is why you cannot get your local radio station in Dubai even though the waves technically travel that far. So even if aliens are sending us radio signals from many light years away, we would not be able to distinguish them from the background radiation of the universe.
2.) As to abiogenisis, the experiments I am aware of simulated the conditions of early Earth and found that basic bio-molecules (amino acids, nucleic acids, etc) formed quite easily. It would take running that experiment for extremely long time scales with a large amount of matter to expect an actual life form to result, since theoretically it took hundreds of millions of years and a whole planet to produce our one common ancestor.
MichaelT wrote:
It would take running that experiment for extremely long time scales with a large amount of matter to expect an actual life form to result, since theoretically it took hundreds of millions of years and a whole planet to produce our one common ancestor.
Hang on, that’s not a good argument MichaelT. Maybe you were just dashing it off fast, but you’re missing my point if you stand by that statement after re-reading it.
(On your other point: Do you think our SETI programs then are guaranteed to fail at the outset? I’m not doing a gotcha I’m just making sure you realize what you’re saying. Why are we bothering to try to communicate with aliens if we know there’s no way they could ever get a signal to us?)
I actually agree with you more than the NASA guys, I was just trying to respond to a few points that you made. Abiogenisis is basically a placeholder theory, like the Big Bang, where we trace back history as best as we know it to an origin point. No one knows the exact circumstances of the first life form or the exact moment the universe began, and I agree with you that people make overconfident statements about those issues.
And as to the Seti program, the goal is to get really accurate radio-telescopes that can filter out the background radiation as much as possible to detect an intelligently sent signal, but like many government programs they constantly oversell their potential.
Did the experiments really find nucleic acids, or did they find the nucleobases like guanine, cytosine, etc.?
MichaelT:
That is not how radio waves work. You may or may not be able to receive Dubai transmissions because of diffusion in the atmosphere, if the skip is positioned correctly.
Bob,
We are “bothering to communicate with aliens” because too many scientists have confused Star Trek reruns with science.
I could have explained that better. I should have just said it takes a more and more powerful antennae to receive a signal the farther you get away from it. Which would mean that our likelihood of knowingly receiving an alien radio transmission would decrease the farther away in space they were.
MichaelT:
You sound like you know more than me but, is there really a mechanism in space to diffuse the radio signal? If it were a focused laser would that also decrease through distance in space?
It’s simply the fact that the intensity of any EM wave decreases the farther you get from the source. Physicists called it the inverse square law. If waves didn’t decrease in intensity over space the intensity of the energy from the sun that hit the Earth would be equal to the energy that hit Pluto.
No matter what type of force we are talking about, it’s intensity (and therefore our ability to pick up the signal) decreases with distance.
The inverse square law states that any wave decreases in intensity as it gets farther away from the source.
Michael T, that is most definitely not true. What is true is that if you have a spherical source of light (like a star), then the amount of light from that source that hits, say, a mirror, goes inversely as the square of the distance (between the source and the mirror). That’s because if R is the distance between the source and the mirrorr and A is the area of the mirror, then the solid angle encompassed by the mirror is proportional to A / (4 pi R^2). And the amount of light that hits the mirror is proportional to the solid angle.
But if you have a laser beam pointing in a given direction, and it hits a mirror a quadrillion miles away, then as long as the mirror is bigger than the cross sectional area of the beam, the mirror will capture 100% of the energy emitted by the beam. Distance doesn’t matter at all.
The laser beams used in the moon-ranging experiments have a diameter 6.5 km at the surface of the moon. This is obviously way, way more focused than inverse square law, but still would need a mirror 25 billion km wide to capture all the energy from a quadrillion miles away. Even with more focused lasers, I don’t think we can say distance doesn’t matter at all.
A laser requires that you know something is there to notice the transmission. So you have to send that type of information to each individual planet that might be capable of receiving and replying (plus having receivers in place). Then lasers travel at light speed, so you don’t get results for hundreds or thousands of years- and then each beam has to be on for centuries to millenia or you miss out on civilizations that weren’t quite ready to receive.
Radio waves are appealing because the idea is you can find civilizations that aren’t specifically looking for you. But there are many many flaws with this approach.
It’s not obvious how the Fermi Paradox applies here because intelligent life could be exceptionally rare (and communication hard or incommensurate) even in a universe teeming with life.
As I said on facebook, though, ID implies alien life as strongly as abiogenesis + evolution. More strongly, in fact. The only model that doesn’t imply alien life is a model that says “abiogenesis and evolution happen but they can ONLY happen on Earth”, and I don’t think anyone is saying that, are they?
Unless you have your own phone line to God, there’s no way you can tell whether ID implies aliens or not. It all comes down to the will of the designer.
Mind you Evolution as a theory can’t tell you specifically what conditions are necessary for the creation of life… we have a statistical sample size of 1 and even that wasn’t measured closely at the time it happened.
ID requires a designer unless you think that designer came out of some (1.) abiotic process (2.) on Earth that (3.) in one step generated a being capable of intelligent design, that means that ID requires alien life, whether we conceptualize that alien life as a god or not.
Interesting point, Daniel. I think it’s a matter of how we define alien. I think God is assumed to have honorary Earthling status and considered part of the “home team” in the same way people tend to anthropomorphize God. I have a hard time imagining why an omniscient being would need to think.
I think the Fermi paradox rests on some weak assumptions like the ability to defeat extreme distance issues with travel and the ubiquity of radio waves as a preferred communication method.
That would be “a God” , one amongst many, living on Mount Olympus, or amongst the branches of Yggdrasil, or some other plane where they pop in and out from time to time.
When Christians (monotheists) refer to God they imply uniqueness, meaning “the designer”. Something beyond the universe, not alien life, just God and nothing else.
There’s a pretty significant difference in perspective, not that I knocking Hindus and Buddhists, but intelligent design is not about that.
It seems to me “something beyond the universe” is that much more alien than something within the universe.
So if there’s a multiverse and there are intelligent beings in those other universes do they count or not count as aliens?
I think Ken P is right that the problem here is that we humans – surprisingly because we are not that closely acquainted with God if he exists! – have given him some kind of honorary Earthling status, except not.
I would think if we want to talk about alien life we’d want to cut through that sort of hand waving and impressionism. If there is a God and he’s not indigenous to the planet then I don’t see how he’s not an intelligent alien life. Certainly if he’s what some people claim to be he is an entirely foreign sort of life form. And then the work only gets harder in explaining the origins of life or even what life is. But he’s obviously alien life by any reasonable definition of the term. You don’t get to make some end run around the issue by just hand-waving and saying something like “he always has been”. That poses a real problem for understanding even if we stipulate that he is a very different sort of life form from us.
Just to be clear, you do understand that it is consistent to believe in ID and also believe that there is no alien life in this universe.
If you want to classify God and angels as aliens, that’s fine, but it isn’t what most people mean when they talk about aliens. Most people are talking about beings on other planets in our universe.
If there are gods or aliens observing us from another dimension, NASA probably won’t find them in the next decade.
Right Andrew Keen. Daniel, if you go back over our arguments and realize that I wasn’t counting God as “an alien” then does it make more sense?
Bob and Andrew –
I know you were classifying God as a non-alien, I’m identifying that as illegitimate. I’m not going to concede that a conclusion from an illegitimate premise “makes sense”, but I do know how you got to that conclusion, yes.
Now Andrew makes another interesting point – that it’s not just biological assumptions underlying the forecast about when we’ll discover life, it’s cosmological assumptions as well.
You are mixing polytheistic and monotheistic philosophy, of course the result makes no sense.
Aliens are necessarily inside and part of our universe, just like we are. They may be more powerful either by accident or birthright or some special technology we don’t have, but they obey the same laws of physics. Polytheistic gods fit into the same pattern, so do the “X-men” in a comic book universe.
Monotheism does not put God into the same category, you may of course disagree with monotheism altogether, but you might as well make the effort to understand what you are disagreeing with.
http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2015/04/understanding-god.html
I grew up quite religious and my brother’s getting a doctorate in theology at U Chicago and I often talk with him about his work. Don’t assume this is some kind of lack of knowledge of a relatively simple point.
The question is is it warranted? We are talking about an intelligent being that didn’t evolve on this Earth. That is an alien life form, and it’s origins pose a serious question. Not necessarily a question we’ll have an answer to of course. But a serious question…
….at least to serious people.
I think it’s fair to let people think of God however they want to think about him in their personal lives.
But if we submit ID as a scientific explanation for life on Earth we can’t exempt the designer himself from consideration. Unless he came from Earth, he’s an alien life form. And in either case we need to query how he came to be. If we’re not willing to consider that then we need to be honest with ourselves that we’re really not offering ID as an explanation of the world around us – we’re offering it to short-circuit actual scientific discussions that make us uncomfortable.
I think our working hypothesis needs to be charitable – we need to assume that ID proponents are sincere.
The answer to how he came to be could be “he always was”, but we need to have reason to think that.
The trouble with God is we have little to go on on these questions.
If (1.), (2.), and (3.) are satisfied then as I said above you can have no alien life. But that is a very high standard to meet. Higher even than abiogenesis + evolution with no ID.
Or if the designer is not alive.
So who created the Creator? Why does the Creator get a pass that He just exists but the Universe can’t? How can something so perfectly complex just exist while a Universe full of primordial ingredients had to form into complex structures very slowly through the law of physics supposedly needs a Creator?
Where did the laws that govern the universe come from? Do you think that matter had to first exist before the the laws that govern them came to be? In the beginning there was the word. The creator does not get a pass it is the creator
At some point we have to accept either a divine being or the existence of matter (even the existence of laws of the universe is probably not sufficient). Thomas Aquinas “must be” and “need not be” argument applies here, but like all cosmological arguments, it’s still a pass, Grane. There is no answer to where the prime mover (or the foundations of the universe) came from.
Ken P:
They are not mutually exclusive. Cosmology, in the time of Aquinas, was solid-state.
Such “laws” exist because they’re immutable. Pi = 3.14159 . .. because there’s no other possible ratio for circumference to the diameter of a circle. God cannot change the value of Pi because Pi will always be Pi. Such “laws” aren’t statutes that “require a lawgiver” but just so facts of life.
A complex Creator existing just because requires a far larger leap of faith then the known Universe emanating from a primordial seed so to speak. Doubly so, when he fact the evidence for the Big Bang all around us.
This may be Gil’s most incoherent comment yet.
A student of Ken Ham perhaps?
I, too, keep hearing about how close we are to proving non-terrestrial life and am quite puzzled how they have “proven” they are close to proving it.
I don’t really care one way or the other but, as one of my teachers once summarized it: we are either alone or the universe is teeming with life. If that is true (it seems reasonable) then the question is binary: either it is there or it is not…there cannot really be stronger evidence without there being absolute evidence.
(Unless, of course, the title of your post refers to your sporadic blogging and you were afraid that you lost all of your followers by sporadic blogging.)
Khodge, the divide continues to grow between what science says and what scientists say. A new kind of quack is emerging, divorced from science, divorced from reason, the scientist.
At least we have journalists to explain science to us.
It takes 8 minutes to reach earth from sun with gravity within Einsten’s framework. It takes a day to reach pluto. This is the rate of transporting information via radio waves.
The gravity well is a form of circular reasoning – ‘explain’ stuff with the same stuff i.e.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTY1Kje0yLg
We are using the wrong type of signals, that’s why we get no results via seti. Any sufficiently developped civilisation would use the near infinite speed of gravity we experience to send signals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACeNtITk9Q
That means they know exactly what we’re up to.
You are just bumping around orthodox and mostly wrong opinions, so you’re bound to get it wrong, because of assumptions – economics is very assumptions dependant. Consider fringe movements with actual predictive powers behind their theories, or you’ll forever dwell in quasi-intellectual endevours you’re pursuing right now. No I do not despise You, I adore You, Your work, personality and features You generally show. But going on with mainstream physics is not the way to go. Those guys are mostly corrupt self-loving maniacs. Their only goal seems to be to produce ever greater intellect penis, while the real thing is such an easy way to grow (not that it matters anyhow, but this again would require some self -understanding) – obligatory LOL.
Meanwhile we might wind up without ,or with very significalntly weakened magnetic shield here on this piece of rock. That might have some real impact on our lives, like end it permanently. We will see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIayxqk0Ees
Gravity doesn’t propagate faster than light.
“They actually don’t have a shred of direct evidence of life outside of Earth, so it’s a bit odd that they think they’re creeping ever closer, and Newmark’s assertions is really odd.”
Bob doesn’t have a shred of direct evidence of god, so it’s a bit odd that he thinks that a god exists.
Zing!
They claim to accept only replicable, empirical evidence. (They also claim to be objective.) The existence of God is outside the realm of empirical science. Of course, so is the universe before the big bang, as well as the multiverse.
“Outside the realm of empirical science” is another way of saying “is imaginary” to me.
Right, the laws of nature are imaginary and the universe is random and unknowable
They’re not imaginary because they’re measureable. Scientists didn’t make up the Big Bang as an atheistic way to compete with a God-based Creation but because the scientific evidence shows it to be true.
Forever Knox, you state emphatically that there is no scientific merit for God’s existence then you demand scientific evidence of its existence. All Bob needs for “proof” is belief and you don’t believe. I think that is fine but if you want to draw some analogy here you have to say that belief is an acceptable standard of scientific evidence. If that is where you truly want to take this then your pal here can save his zings.
Grane Peer represents a singularity. Light goes in but nothing comes out. Bob stated the following:
“They actually don’t have a shred of direct evidence of life outside of Earth, so it’s a bit odd that they think they’re creeping ever closer, and Newmark’s assertions is really odd.”
Scientists, given the information they have now, are putting forth the hypothesis that we will be able to learn of life on other planets in the next few decades. That hypothesis is testable and falsifiable – all we need is time. The same cannot be said for god. There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise, able to justify a belief in god. Keep in mind that Bob was belittling these scientists for a “lack of direct evidence” when his own position has not ever produced any direct evidence, of any kind, in support of itself.
Bob’s, or your own, personal experience which justify your beliefs are not replicable. They are anectdotes, not evidence.
“[B]elief in an acceptable standard of scientific evidence.” What does that even mean?
I am a black hole because you can’t make or follow an argument
His original point was a valid one.
Or do you actually have, or do you know Bob has, DIRECT evidence for God?
If so, where is it? Don’t tell me it’s an eyeball, or some motor like amaeba. Those are indirect.
Bob is effectively asking for direct evidence of actual “little green men”. Yet he does not have direct evidence of God yet he believes in God.
Try not to antagonize simply because you percieve some anti-God mentality. Focus on the arguments and the logic. Knox’s point is valid, no matter how much you dislike him or his approach.
Major, if Bob thinks or has stated that he has direct scientific evidence for God then I will gladly concede to Knox. It seems you have some bias here as well or I am remarkably unclear. I had already stated that I think it is fine if Knox doesn’t believe. I am focused on one argument that doesn’t make any sense to me and you are bringing other stuff into the discussion.
Bob’s belief in god is not predicated on scientific evidence. Whether this be right or wrong it is not analogous to asking for scientific evidence in scientific matters, so, no, Knox’s point is not valid.
For the record, I do not have any problem with Knox and he has on occasion made some truly damning points. I bow to no god and have no religion that doesn’t preclude me from calling bs on atheists.
“Major, if Bob thinks or has stated that he has direct scientific evidence for God then I will gladly concede to Knox.”
Oh that won’t do at all, because the point being made is not that Murphy has claimed there is direct evidence for God, but the fact that he is chastising scientists who believe in the existence of life outside the Earth on “not a shred of direct evidence”.
In other words, if you are going to hold others to a particular minimum standard for accepting a theory as true, or likely, etc, then it makes sense that you would at least be holding yourself to that minimum standard.
Murphy emphasized the ” not a shred” so as to show that the belief in life outside of the Earth does not meet the burden of sufficient evidence. Yet Murphy believes in God with far less than direct evidence.
The burden of scientific proof is not that we must have iron clad direct evidence of a theory. Indeed from a certain philosophical perspective that is impossible (not that I agree with that perspective, but it is found within the militant atheist science camp).
All Knox was saying is that the part he quoted from Murphy about there not being a shred of evidence for life outside the Earth, when contrasted or juxtaposed with Murphy’s own belief in God without a shred of direct evidence, seems inconsistent.
Do you deny that?
Also, yes I probably am biased to some degree.
Major, This is getting back to the original point I made to knox. In order for Bob to be inconsistent then there has to be some consistency between the two positions. Either Bob thinks there is or can be scientific evidence for god or belief is an acceptable standard of scientific evidence. I don’t think the former is so and the latter would raise some serious problems. Problems that I do in fact think exist. If Bob is being inconsistent then consistency demands that both points are either valid or invalid, meaning religious belief and scientific belief. This kind of thing goes both ways so I am hard pressed to understand why an atheist would go out of his way to make a self defeating argument like this.
You can say Bob is being inconsistent and then try wrestle out of the implications from that or you can recognize that science and religion are different, have different standards and Bob is not being inconsistent because there are two completely different things at play here.
In other words, do as I say and not a I do.
Major, if this discussion was between scientific “proof” and mathematical proof would you still think this boiled down to ‘do as I say not as I do’ ?
This is between proofs of two theories that both require scientific evidence though.
Well major it sounds like your conception of god can be proved or disproved by scientific evidence. I guess all we need is time.
Actually my own conception need not be revealed or suggested by anything I said above about what others are saying regarding evidence and theories.
I purposefully withheld judgments concerning what I think is the logical status of the concept of God.
Notice my use of the phrases “The point being made…” and “Murphy is saying…” and “Knox is saying…”.
It is permissible for an arbitrator to be able to umderstand two opposing arguments that he does not think are even right.
“Or do you actually have, or do you know Bob has, DIRECT evidence for God?”
I’m of the persuasion that there’s no direct evidence that agnostics would be prepared to accept.
Look at their reaction to quantum physics: “Non-existent things are causing themselves to exist and then to not exist.”
(My observation coming from knowing nothing about quantum physics; Also, I’m not ready to concede that what they think they are observing is actually happening, even though that would be a proof of God’s existence.)
Pretty sure if a being appeared out of thin air, and persisted in its appearance, displayed its omnipotent power and showed observationally to everyone in the world the power to move the moon, make clones of people appear beside themselves, showed invulnerability to nuclear attacks, could fly, show a face in the sky, lift mountains, create whole galaxies with a snap, changed form to whatever anyone suggested so as to prove to themselves that being is God, and did everything anyone asked so as to prove it to them, cured every disease the world over instantaneously, or caused an instantaneous world war, only to have everyone suddenly stop fighting just as instantaneously, made Jesus and Muhammed appear, then flooded the whole world while teleporting everyone to another galaxy, then back again, and kept performing such “miracles” over and over again, then I think I am of the persuasion that most if not all so-called agnostics would not do what you say they would do, which is to believe in something other than this being is God. I think most would accept that being is God.
Some may believe the simulation has gone haywire.
Some others may believe they are dreaming.
I just don’t think you can make such a sweeping generalizations about every single agnostic, most of whom I would suspect you have never even met!
After all, the definition of an agnostic is someone who isn’t sure there is or isn’t a God, and that includes not believing or disbelieving on the basis of insufficient evidence.
Agnosticism is sitting on the fence until some such event or thought or experience takes place that leads the person to one side or the other.
If an alleged agnostic still does not believe after direct evidence you’re talking about occurs, then does it really make any sense to say they are agnostic? Seems like they would be atheists instead.
“Pretty sure if a being appeared out of thin air, and persisted in its appearance, displayed its omnipotent power …”
But, then, we can’t let a divine foot in the door, now, can we? Because science.
Also, PhotoShop and such.
“Seems like they would be atheists instead.”
Atheism is currently a logistically impossible position to hold, since no one is yet capable of observing every location in the universe at once.
I don’t have to look into every last corner of the universe to know that there are no square circles anywhere.
You do know of synthetic a priori propositions right? That we can know truths of reality prior to experiencing reality as an omniscient being would, right?
Atheism is not logicall impossible, if what is not believed in is itself logically impossible.
“You do know of synthetic a priori propositions right?”
lulz
“Atheism is not logicall impossible, if what is not believed in is itself logically impossible.”
What you’re saying, then, is that you believe God to be logically impossible.
That’s fine. All of the proofs that you asked for before, though, are of an empirical nature: flying and such.
My Argument from Free Will is of a logical nature, and is therefore at least a plausible challenge to your position, I say acknowledging the merits of synthetic a priorism for the benefit of others.
I don’t expect to observe a being doing the things I posted above that would likely convince an agnostic that God existed. Agnostics are not atheists.
MF wrote:
Bob is effectively asking for direct evidence of actual “little green men”. Yet he does not have direct evidence of God yet he believes in God.
Do you guys remember when I wrote in my post about why I know there is a God, that I literally heard a voice in my head saying “I forgive you”? (It was the rocking horse post; you guys really liked that one. I’m sure you remember it.)
So you are free to say I’m lying or nuts or just misunderstood what happened, but that would count as direct evidence. Likewise, if the NASA scientist said, “An alien talked to me” or “We found a big book purportedly dictated by aliens” then that would prima facie be direct evidence of aliens. I would then challenge them (if I chose to do so) by saying that the NASA guys were wrong about what they experienced or where that book came from.
But no, instead they are pointing out that there is water outside of Earth, and I’m pointing out that that is not direct evidence of life. It’s evidence of water.
Let me put it this way: There are people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. If I chose to dispute their story, it wouldn’t even occur to me to say, “They don’t have a shred of direct evidence that aliens exist.” Instead I would say something like, “We have no independent way of corroborating their claims, so it’s reasonable to assume they are nuts / lying / mistaken about what happened.”
As always, it’s frustrating that we have to have these elementary lessons on how evidence and reason work, when supposedly this is your guys’ area of expertise.
Voices in one’s head is not direct evidence that God exists.
Thoughts of God is not direct evidence of God.
Direct evidence of God would be something that can be observed/detected outside oneself in addition to being understood.
If a NASA scientist claims he talked to an alien, then direct evidence would not be merely his thought of talking to an alien. It would be a detection of an alien outside is mind out there in reality.
If someone claimed to have been abducted by aliens, then direct evidence of that would be some residual external to his mind evidence, perhaps a video, or something about his body that is not the result of his mere thought of being abducted.
You are contradicting yourself by the way. You claimed that the scientists do not have a shred of direct evidence that there is life outside the Earth. Yet according to your definition of direct evidence that you used when claiming to have direct evidence of God, all the scientists have to do is THINK there is life outside the Earth, and they would be providing you with the same “thought equals direct evidence” that you assert is not direct evidenc when the context is aliens!
Come on Murphy! How can you not see that?
Another contradiction is your claim the God is beyond all human understanding, and your claim that you understood what he told you in your head about the concepts of “I” and of “forgiveness” and of “you.”
If God is beyond all human understanding, then you must be silent on everything about God.
Grane Peer,
I don’t need to say anything else because Major Freedom did an excellent job. I’m afraid you are the one who fails to understand the argument.
Knox
-That’s an easy one. Life on Earth was around over three and a half billion years before the radio was invented here. And humans are the first “advanced” species on this planet. And there was nothing even remotely human on this planet before roughly 2700000 years ago.
Science has decided to compete with against religion on the home ground of the religions… making one group of people feel good about themselves and superior to other groups of people. They used the Scientific Method, they saw that one upmanship was a valuable product, worth money in the marketplace, so they went into business.
This might be a tiny exaggeration but I’m sure you have all seen what I’m talking about.
“They actually don’t have a shred of direct evidence of life outside of Earth, so it’s a bit odd that they think they’re creeping ever closer, and Newmark’s assertions is really odd.”
That is just not true. There is SOME direct evidence of life outside of Earth. They have found complex organic compunds, the same type that are the buildings blocks of life on Earth, on other planets and moons.
There is also simple Google searches ones can do that tell us there is SOME evidence, however sporadic and thin. “Not a shred” is far too strong a claim.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/518510/Aliens-do-exist-scientists-find-proof-of-life-in-space
Finally, it makes no sense why “Bible thumpers” should find it necessary to be so incredibly skeptical of there being no evidence of life outside the Earth, for two reasons. One, it is not too strong to say that there is absolutely not a shred of direct evidence that God exists. If you’re going to play the healthy skeptic card, then be sure you use it on your own beliefs. Two, the discovery of conclusive proof that life exists outside the Earth will not in any way “disprove” God or Jesus or the Bible, since religious faith is non-falsifiable, and even if it were falaifiable, there is no good reason to believe God, should it exist, be a God that puts life ONLY on Earth, in a universe unfathomably huge and teeming with solar systems and planets.
MF wrote:
That is just not true. There is SOME direct evidence of life outside of Earth. They have found complex organic compunds, the same type that are the buildings blocks of life on Earth, on other planets and moons.
If they find tin on Mars, will that be direct evidence that there are Martian forks?
Bob,
If life were found on other planets would you cease to believe in god? Put another way, would that be THE fatal blow to all religions, not just Christianity?
Knox
Serious question: Why the insistence on there being so-called “direct” evidence? Why impose such a restrictive threshold?
Did you know that we “don’t have a shred of DIRECT evidence” that the core of the Sun is composed of very dense helium and hydrogen, whereby hydrogren atoms are being fused into helium, releasing large quantities of energy which take thousands of years to reach the surface before finally travels to us on Earth keeping us warm? That the evidence for that is as indirect as indirect can be, and yet even many hardcore theists accept the theory that the Sun’s core is composed of hydrogen and helium based on the indirect evidence?
I don’t think it is fair at all to ask for “direct” evidence of anything before you can reasonably believe that something is true based on that indirect evidence.
Another example: did you know that you don’t have a shred of direct evidence that I myself am human? That every post you have ever seen from me, if you have all along been of the belief that I am human, was all along based on indirect evidence, not direct evidence?
To respond to your post more directly:
I will first ask:
Define “fork”?
If we define “fork” as a rough shape consisting of a stick like length along with a split end, which when we observe it we reasonably believe that object might be suitable for picking up bits of food to put into our mouths, then I would say that if we are searching for “forks” around the universe, and on Mars we found the presence of tin deposits, then I know what I would not say is “There is not a shred of evidence of forks outside the Earth”. I would say the evidence is very very slight.
After all, “forks” are not something that ONLY an already existing intelligent being can create.
I was blind, but now I see.
“Another example: did you know that you don’t have a shred of direct evidence that I myself am human?”
I never supposed you were. I thought you were an advanced AI putting us all to an extended Turing test 🙂
The Fermi paradox is probably totally bunk. The assumptions about a universe teeming with life trying to connect with any other living organism basically run countrary to th majority of humans and human history. If there was a massive drive to explore and identify new worlds and life you could do so on earth. Trenches at the bottom of oceans, Antartica, isolated tribes in the Amazon. Humans spend a pittance and such exploration right now.
If we were to discover some proto bacteria on planet X there would be a huge surge in interest- but how long would that last when 10 years later we had found 1 more proto bacteria, and 20 years after that a handful of likely spots with some chance of life? Envisioning alliens as aggressively searching for other life or colonizing other star systems is to imagine that they are radically different from ourselves.
I think the other interesting question on this is whether we’ll find alien life first in our Solar System or outside of it.
An example of what happens when you take the approach that God is a powerful alien:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2015/04/16/guest-post-ian-plimer-the-environmental-impact-of-creation/
“It is typical for atheists to mock Christians for having their self-esteem deflated in the wake of the heliocentric model of the solar system and of course Darwin. “Oh, boo hoo, you poor babies aren’t so special after all! You’re not the center of the universe and you’re no more significant than a slug. Deal with it, Bible thumper.””
Especially curious since geocentricism was adopted by Christianity largely out of a sense not of the special importance of the Earth, but of it’s peculiar lowness. Earth wasn’t just the center, it was the bottom, beneath, less than the heavens, the base, depraved, fallen Earth.
” Don’t forget Fermi’s paradox: If the universe is actually teeming with life–as the standard models predict–then why aren’t we being bombarded with radio messages from advanced aliens? It’s weird that NASA scientists are confident they’ll discover the existence of microbes within 20 years, and yet the SETI programs continue to search the heavens for any hint of intelligence.”
I think you’ll like XKCD’s response to this: https://what-if.xkcd.com/47/
an excerpt: “You can work through the physics of interstellar radio attenuation, but the problem is captured pretty well by considering the economics of the situation: If your TV signals are getting to another star, you’re losing money. Powering a transmitter is expensive, and creatures on other stars aren’t buying the products in the TV commercials that pay your electricity bill.”
So aliens HAVE been sending signals back: market signals in the form of lower preferences for SETI signals.
That rhetorical question of “why don’t we hear alien signals all the time?” is as nail on the chalkboard pleasant as the “why are there still monkeys?” nonsense.
The very first radio signal with enough power to reach the super distant stars occurred in 1974 at Arecibo. This sphere of intelligent life communication from Earth has been expanding/traveling for only 40 years.
Even if aliens sent signals 90,000 years ago from the other edge of the galaxy, those messages still would not have gotten to us yet. The milky way alone is 100,000 light years wide.
It could be another 50,000 years before the Earth’s sky is lit up by alien communications. The universe is a big place man.
“… as the “why are there still monkeys?” nonsense.”
That’s just a misunderstanding of the claim, which is NOT that we are descendants of the kinds of apes that we see today.
It’s a logical response, otherwise, since if evolution selected for (ultimately) humans, then those apes would have ceased to exist.
But then, evolution can’t account for free will, so …
“It could be another 50,000 years before the Earth’s sky is lit up by alien communications.”
We could stimulate their aggregate demand for our communications by launching Krugman into space.
Evolution has not ultimately selected for humans. We are just another link in the chain. Imagine the chimps sitting there wondering “why are there still humans?”
What I meant by “ultimately”, is that, according to the theory of evolution, the common ancestry happened through several species, “ultimately” resulting in humans (up until today).
And if natural selection selected for the next species of ape to survive (which is what is happening in natural selection), then the species that was not strong enough died out.
Therefore, if the theory of evolution said that the apes alive today are our ancestor species, then we could rule out that theory on the basis of logical inconsistency.
OK, I understand what you meant now.
MF wrote: “It could be another 50,000 years before the Earth’s sky is lit up by alien communications. The universe is a big place man.”
MF which of the following are you saying Physics Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi didn’t know?
(A) The universe is a big place.
(B) The speed of light in a vacuum.
(C) How to divide.
Neither A, nor B, nor C.
(D) Underestimated the factors that would prevent communications, and overestimated the probability of intelligent life within our region of the universe that would communicate.
It is guaranteed I overestimated or underestimated something in my life, but what I do not overestimate is appeals to authority in order to promote what is convenient for my own worldview, especially when those authorities have other views that I would strongly disagree with despite them having a Nobel Prize.
Do we always have to preface our disagreements with Nobel Prize winners with “He’s super duper awesome smart and clever, but…”? It feels fake to me. I really don’t care about whether one person or group of people give a piece of metal to another person. It means nothing for what is true and what is false.
” I really don’t care about whether one person or group of people give a piece of metal to another person. It means nothing for what is true and what is false.”
At least not since Obama got one for, I guess, enchanting reporters to forget that the whole point of Freedom of the Press is to hold the government accountable.
MF this is really tiresome. Your argument was based on how big the universe was. You even concluded with, “The universe is big place, man” (or words to that effect).
Now I take it that what you meant was, “Life is really rare, man.”
Not sure why it is tiresome, but I will say that the universe being so huge is what makes any given population of life so rare, if rare means very low life per unit volume of space.
I am not saying one or the other, but both. They are related.
I don’t know what the topic is anymore.
Maybe all the intelligent life throughout the universe is teeming with socialist economies, which is putting a real drag on their capital structures, and hence, their ability to engage in longer production processes, such as interstellar travel.
Lets have a look at the paradox. There are 3×10^11 stars in our galaxy. If we assume the mediocrity principle (that we are not exceptional) then there should be a large number of civilisations in our galaxy – even if only a small fraction of stars have them.
We must then assume that civilisations will tend to colonize or explore – their own and then other star systems. Something like a generation ship is possibly not so far beyond Earth technology at the moment, and this would colonise the galaxy in a few tens of millions of years- a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy. This requires that civilisations will have a long duration.
The Galaxy is 100,000 light years across, but several billion years old. There is no reason why signals or probes should only have been sent in the last few hundreds of thousands of years.
So the fact that we do not see them means some of these hypotheses or assumptions must be wrong – take your pick.
Some say the Earth is exceptional – rejecting the mediocrity principle. Some that alien civilisations may not colonize or explore. The technological problems may be greater than we think. Civilisations may be short lived, either because they tend to self destruction or they are destroyed by natural events. One multiverse hypothesis says that young universes vastly outnumber old ones, so it is overwhelmingly likely that any given universe will have just one civilisation – the first to emerge.
The Fermi paradox is not difficult to refute – but it does force us to asses some of our assumptions. We have not seen evidence of aliens, so why not?
What you have to understand is that every advancing civilization reaches a critical stage where governments divert massive amounts of science funding into looking for ways to shut down all the energy sources on the planet because they were worried about too much plant food.
That basically explains the answer to Fermi’s paradox right there.
I know what you guys are thinking, “But this could never happen to us!”
Yup, that’s exactly what all the others said, and where are they now huh?
*massive* amounts of funding to shut down *all* the energy sources? A tad alarmist I fear.
—Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970, p. 323
One of those guys is helping to make government policy to run your country.
As a celebration of Lenin’s birthday, might be worth remembering some other quotes from the same crew.
http://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-apocalyptic-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-the-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-2/
Okay, I am 100% a Christian. I believe that Jesus, was and is the Messiah purported to come by a slew of prophets. That He did a huge monumental thing. Now I also believe 100% in alien life. This is not the only world out there nor is it the only world God has created.
Life is not as rare as one may even think.
As far as why we have not discovered life in other areas of the galaxy. What makes us so sure we know what to look for. You may talk of radio or other signals. What if the aliens used something else? Or what if they developed that at a different time then what we have ‘heard’? Space is big and radio signals are, well puny. Why is it that a child throwing a rock into the Pacific in Japan is not noticed by a beach comber in San Diego.
I have no evidence to back up what I claim except my own understanding of God. He is a creator. He did not stop creating, nor did He stop building. But creation takes time.
Maybe some day we will see more than we do right now. I think the most important thing to remember is knowledge takes time and come line upon line and precept upon precept.
Cheers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjxFJfcrcA